Computer browsing applications generate user value by providing effective and useful platforms for presenting and depicting information, with varying mechanisms for abstracting data and providing context for information that is displayed. Presentation of large quantities of data in a manner that can be quickly consumed by the user continues to be a challenging design objective for browsing applications. As further design iterations of existing mechanisms approach an asymptotic relationship with increases in effectiveness or utility of those mechanisms, new paradigms in the presentation of multidimensional data become increasingly attractive.
Graphical displays of quantitative data associate respective data values with graphical structures, such as bars, circles, pie-sections, and so on. These graphical displays improve user consumption of data by providing a visual rendering of relationships between quantitative values that can be quickly seen by a viewer. Early graphical displays correlate different dimensions of a graphical display or chart, such as horizontal dimension and vertical dimension, with different dimensions of the data. A common two-dimensional display, for instance, can depict a list of entities in a first dimension with a corresponding set of quantitative values or qualitative characteristics (e.g., colors) in a second dimension. Several methods have been developed to expand beyond the simple two-dimensional display. As an example, multiple two-dimensional charts can be employed to depict three dimensions of data. Alternatively, three dimensional charts can depict three dimensions of data on a single chart. And of course, multiple three dimensional charts can be employed to depict a fourth dimension of data. The obvious limitation, of course, is that the number of dimensions of data that can be displayed in a single chart is limited by the number of dimensions that can be depicted in a graphical display.
While utilization of multiple charts increases contextual dimension of a graphical display, it also adds to a user's mental overhead, by requiring the user to mentally link two or more charts and their associated data together. This increased mental overhead tends to slow down user consumption of data. Moreover, multidimensional charts having large amounts of data can become prohibitively complex for a viewer, dramatically slowing data consumption.
In addition to mental overhead, complex multidimensional charts can be difficult to construct and interact with. User interaction with a graphical display can provide additional value, allowing a user to quickly change and update data, focus on subsets of the data to enhance understanding of the information presented, understand relationships between subsets of data, and so on. Simple graphical charts like pie charts, bar charts, line charts, etc., offer limited user interactivity, however. Furthermore, these charts are limited to a linear and often rigid presentation of relativistic data (e.g., bars, lines, pie sections). Moreover, space limitations on the amount of information that can be displayed at a given time tend to be restrictive.
The above-identified deficiencies of today's graphical displays and data charts are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with the state of the art and corresponding benefits of some of the various non-limiting embodiments may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.